The theory of human development is under the heading of anthropology. I think it is a collection of many theories regarding various aspects of human development. You might start with a book that introduces the subject of anthropology.

At 11/13/2014 5:05:59 PM, hotnicey wrote:There are good psychology theories on human development. Which is the best?

I feel any model that limits environmental variables and tools to improve are very hurtful designed off of Galton and Gardner who believed in social evolution with genetics playing the essential role. I feel we need as teachers to provide as many environmental variables/tools as we can to create more hope and esteem for our students. I feel our current models of permanence in ability are creating hopeless, anxiety, stagnant students, and many harmful escapes such as over eating, over shopping, drug/alcohol abuse and suicide. I feel we are creating many deaths each year from those teachings in our schools.While I am relatively more in favor of Maslow's environmental model, I feel even it comes up short in requiring needs to be met before continuing on to other areas. I feel it also lacks the cognitive tools to help lower average layer of mental work that create our average stress.I personally like Lynn Oliver's model that shows much more how our individual environments greatly affect thinking, learning, motivation to learn (mental reward received for mental work expended, and also our mental emotional health. It also provides much understanding, tools, and hope for children and adults to continually change and improve their abilities and lives over time. It provides two very large cognitive tools we can model to younger students and teach to older students and adults to help them continually change and become newer better persons over time.It provides a wonderful variable/tool by redefining our average stress as many layers of mental work from past, present, future experiences, concerns, needs, problems, interpersonal relations, etc. that create our total average stress or layers.It shows an upright rectangle that represents our full mental energy and then presents horizontal lines from the bottom showing how our many layers of mental work figuratively take up real mental energy leaving less mental energy for learning and motivation to learn. It shows how those layers can accumulate to create both psychological suffering and a much shorter reflection time (the less space above those layers creates less longer term thinking and cuts down more complex thinking).It shows just how a person who is suffering from higher average stress that reaches the top will seek out short term escapes and even violence with death when undergoing for a time extreme high layers of mental work that lowers sufficiently their feelings of self-worth.Her theory then shows how we can all slowly begin to use this environmental variable as a wonderful tool to continually change and improve our lives. It points out we cannot just relax or use mediation to lower our average stress as it is made up of layers of real mental work. When we relax or use meditation we may feel good, but when attempt a new mental work, we are simply turning back on the faucet so our layers then return to its average point.She brings out how we can all slowly begin to approach our individual environments more delicately each day to slowly begin to understand, resolve, and make changes in some faulty weight or values that have created one or more needless layers of mental work creating our average stress. With each more permanently removed layer we improve that much our mental energy to a better point to improve learning, motivation and mental/emotional health. This tool releases all students and adults from the horrible teachings of permanence and genetic in ability that is creating many stagnant students and many thousands of deaths each year from the terrible myth of genetics currently being taught in our schools today.She uses a second variable/tool that shows how as our pace and intensity in approaching a mental work exceeds our immediate knowledge and experience or try too hard at firs, we only intensity our average stress, making it even harder to learn. Sadly the higher our average stress so predominate in our lower socioeconomic areas, the more that higher average stress bleeds off into improper pace and intensity, making learning and motivation for those students even harder. She says probably 25 percent of our average stress comes from improper pace and intensity in approaching newer mental work such as academics. She says we should all slow down even to the point of simply reflecting on information at first and allow our minds to develop mental frames for that new information. As we gain more knowledge and skills in an area, we will slowly develop more complex mental frames capable of learning that information and more complex related information over time with the same enjoyment or mental reward received for mental work expended. This means much more hope, motivation, long-term learning, and more independent learning, namely homework.She goes on to show how our Male Crisis is created by very differential treatment (not genetics) of more aggression and much less for support for boys as early as one year of age to make them tougher. She points out how the more correct, kind, caring, verbal interaction and other mental, emotional, social supports over time by parents, peers, teachers, and others is creating very different results greatly favoring girls in education.